These Trillions are Starting to Add Up!

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) yesterday released its initial evaluation of the Democrat-sponsored "Affordable Health Choices Act." This analysis did not factor in the entire cost of the legislation, a point that the CBO director is at pains to make, as only the major provisions of the bill were evaluated.



As if the trillions of dollars already introduced into the federal deficit by Barack Hussein Muhammad bin Obama were not enough, the initial, and incomplete estimate of the CBO for this preliminary Democrat-Socialist health care legislation confirms two major points that skeptics of Obama's fantasyland health plans have been making.

* The U.S. cannot afford a major restructuring of the health care system, as the (again, preliminary) estimate is that the cost of the Democrat plan would add more than $1 trillion to existing deficits.

* That any plan such as the nationalization of health care favored by Democrats and Obama would effectively function as a disincentive for private insurance.

In other words, those who now are paying for private insurance would drop their own coverage in preference for the subsidized or free health care offered by the government. This last point undeniably indicates that the socialization of health care has very little to do with the uninsured, and rather has to do with inflicting a command-and-control economy on the United States.

The CBO director wrote on the CBO blog:

According to our preliminary assessment, enacting the proposal would result in a net increase in federal budget deficits of about $1.0 trillion over the 2010-2019 period. When fully implemented, about 39 million individuals would obtain coverage through the new insurance exchanges. At the same time, the number of people who had coverage through an employer would decline by about 15 million (or roughly 10 percent), and coverage from other sources would fall by about 8 million, so the net decrease in the number of people uninsured would be about 16 million or 17 million.

In addition, the CBO frets that the total cost for social welfare/socialized health care spending is not likely encompassed even by the outrageous Democrat proposal at issue, since Democrats are also proposing an expansion of Medicaid, the fiscal consequences of which will not be known until the extent of the expansion is decided.

CBO On Obama Recession: Years To Recovery

Today, the Director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, on the CBO Director's blog, summarized his most recent testimony before Congress.

* While a "recovery" (read: the end of "negative growth") is expected in the second half of this year, unemployment will continue to spike and will stabilize this year in excess of 10%.

* Unemployment's return to pre-Obama levels will likely take "several years" (read: when The Messiah is no longer in office).

* "Even if the economy returns to positive growth this year, the loss in output and income during this downturn will be huge" (note: even if - doesn't sound like we can expect a return to positive growth this year).

* The difference between "actual" and "potential" output of the economy (read: lost production) will exceed $1 trillion both this year and next, and "CBO’s forecast in August is likely to show even larger shortfalls in output over the next few years" (read: the brakes have effectively been put on the economy).

* "The current recession and its aftermath will be the most severe economic downturn of the postwar period."

* "Most experts also believe that persistent large deficits reduce capital accumulation and thereby slow the growth of output and incomes over time. Thus, the large deficits that CBO projects for the years after the economy has returned to full employment are more worrisome" (read: while the CBO is giving a grudging pass to the current $1.7 trillion deficit, it is sounding the alarm that the party can't go on forever, and Obama's spending is going to have to stop).

*"The sharp increase in debt this year and next raises the risk that investors might lose confidence in U.S. government debt as a safe haven" (read: hyperinflation has already started, and we can't trust the collective mainstream media of other countries to keep it a secret like our own home-grown fourth estate is pleased to do).

Odd that the mainstream media hasn't really made any of these points since the Director's testimony was just yesterday. Perhaps CBS and CNN and MSNBC do not know that the CBO director has a blog...?